Authors Elsa Díaz-Montes, Roberto Castro-Muñoz
Food preservation technologies are currently facing important challenges at extending the shelf-life of perishable food products (e.g., meat, fish, milk, eggs, and many raw fruits and vegetables) that help to meet the daily nutrient requirement demand, food preservation , suitability of the used processes and generation of environmentally friendly, preservation protocols deals with the use of edible films and coatings, main used components (e.g., biopolymers, additives, bioactive, and probiotic components), manufacturing methods (for edible films or coatings) and their application to specific products, different materials have been employed as packaging materials, such as paper, cardboard, metal, glass, plastic, this traditional preservation method is the one that produces large quantities of urban solid wastes, renewable raw materials have been deeply explored in recent years at aiming to minimize pollution problems through alternative biodegradable packaging, protect the product while their production, recycling, and degradation are relatively easy, friendly polymeric materials needed to avoid environmental waste, state-of-the-art of the use of edible films and coatings in different foods, paying special attention to the main used components (e.g., biopolymers, additives, bioactive, and probiotic components), manufacturing methods (for edible films or coatings) and their application to specific products, Food Packaging and its Role in Food Preservation, maintain most of the physicochemical, functional, and organoleptic characteristics of the food, packaging must not interact with the product and protect it from external damage of chemical, physical, and biological type, Chemical damage includes exposure to gases, moisture and light; physical damage refers to any damage caused by any shock or vibration; and biological damage is caused by the action of pathogens, insects, animals, or the senescence of the food itself, An edible film or coating is any material with a thickness of less than 0.3 mm , which is formed from a combination of biopolymers and different additives dispersed in aqueous media, edible film is previously made and then adhered to the product, edible films and coatings can present, protection against UV light, transport of solutes (e.g., salts, additives, and pigments), water vapor, organic vapors (e.g., aromas and solvents), and gases (e.g., oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and ethylene) between food and the atmosphere, barrier against mechanical damage (e.g., dents or cuts) , increase the shelf-life of the product, bioactive components (e.g., antioxidants),antimicrobial effect against bacterial reproduction and fungal contamination (e.g., silver nanoparticles), healthy microorganisms (e.g., probiotics) that confer benefits to the consumer; and biodegradable natural materials, edible films and coatings are often evaluated for their mechanical properties, such as elasticity modulus (EM), elongation at break (E), and tensile strength (TS), which refer to their elasticity and rigidity, and the force necessary to break them, further, they display similar mass transfer phenomena (i.e., permeation, adsorption, and diffusion), which is related to the transport of solutes between food and the atmosphere, structures of biopolymeric matrices, biopolymers and additives in the production of edible films and coatings, function in edible films and coatings, polysaccharides, starch, cellulose, pectin, gums, chitosan, agar, aloe vera gel, alginate, dextran, properties, thickeners, gellants, emulsifiers, stabilizers, coating, form the base structure of a solid polymer matrix, additives plasticizers, glycerol, aloe, resins, viscosity, resistance, flexibility, decrease the intermolecular force and the melting temperature in the mixture, modify the viscosity and the rheological properties, Aloe
